


She Wishes She Was a Dancer

by websandwhiskers



Series: The Proper Care and Feeding of Indefinable Things [7]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Baby Fic, F/M, Gen, More Baggage, Natasha has weird ways of showing affection, WARNING: Baby in (brief and averted) danger, baggage, but the author isn't making a political point, but you really want her for a friend, except about the rainbow onesie, political protests happen in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-09
Updated: 2012-07-09
Packaged: 2017-11-09 11:33:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/websandwhiskers/pseuds/websandwhiskers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Natasha is a much gentler teacher, she suspects, that those who taught her – her evidence being that she doesn't really know how she was taught, but her vocabulary of ingrained responses is varied and vast.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Wishes She Was a Dancer

“This is a necessity,” Natasha announces, holding a tiny outfit up for Pepper's approval – a foregone conclusion, but still, where's the fun in handing it off to the salesgirl and letting Pepper find it in the bags later? Then Natasha wouldn't get to see her face.

“Oh my _God_ , it is,” Pepper agrees, snatching the onesie from Natasha's grasp one-handed – Maggie occupying her other arm – and, showing an impressive level of dexterity, managing to wriggle the garment halfway inside-out at the neck and flip up the tag. “Oh, and organic, good, yay. Here, one in two sizes larger, too, please?” Pepper hands it off to the salesgirl. “That's too good to grow out of at the rate someone is presently growing.” 

“Would I forget your exacting standards?” Natasha asks. 

“You might have been distracted by the aesthetics,” Pepper suggests. Natasha raises a doubtful brow; Pepper scowls acknowledgement of the point, and Maggie – better known as Magpie - grabs the tag of something behind her and makes a valiant if doomed attempt at dragging it toward her mouth.

The salesgirl stares a beat too long, before visibly shaking herself and beginning to sort through the rack where Natasha had found the onesie in question.

Actually, most of the entire sales _team_ is standing around staring; most of them are just putting on a bad pretense of tidying the boutique's inventory. Their personal attendant has no such luxury.

It's really not Pepper that has them so flabbergasted; the CEO of Stark Industries is allowed to have an adorable daughter who she enjoys dressing in ridiculously artsy, organic cotton, hand-made clothing. She's apparently not, however, allowed to bring The Scariest Avenger along on a girls' day out. (This is not Natasha's opinion of herself, but rather Time Magazine's.) 

The onesie is printed with Dali's _The Persistance of Memory_ – melting clocks, on a baby. Entirely the sort of subtle joke that Pepper enjoys, and that makes Natasha enjoy Pepper. 

“Hrmm -” Pepper's eyes drift to something a few paces away; she tries to move, realizes her offspring is attached, and pries Magpies hand off the tag. Maggie gives an indignant squawk. Pepper picks up the vibrantly rainbow-striped dress-and-diaper-cover set that comes with the tag and scowls at it; Maggie makes grabby hands.

“Well, I suppose I can't argue with her politics,” Pepper allows. 

“She likes the bright colors and the contrast,” Natasha counters.

“Hush,” says Pepper, “My daughter has just made her first statement in favor of equal rights, it's a solemn moment.” 

Natasha snorts; Magpie puts the sleeve in her mouth and begins sucking with noisy contentment. Pepper lets her hang onto the dress and gum at it for the rest of their shopping trip, much to the salesgirl's obvious pain – Natasha wonders what the girl thinks happens to all these precious clothes once they leave the store anyway. Most of them probably end up wiping up vomit at some point in their existence. It's not like Pepper doesn't intend to buy it. 

***

The baby boutique has a chic little cafe upstairs that serves socially-responsible gourmet sandwiches in a baby-friendly yet upscale environment. Natasha holds Maggie and feeds her tiny bits of free trade banana and brown rice pudding while Pepper gorges herself on exotic mushrooms, aged cheese, and free hands. 

Natasha taps Magpie's palm in Morse code to spell out 'U S A' and 'S T A R K', then takes the baby's chubby little finger and helps her repeat the motions. Once Natasha lets go of her hand, the tapping goes random, then disintegrates into clutching at the bowl of pudding, Natasha's hands, and Natasha's hair. 

Natasha feeds her another bite, weaving the spoon around and waiting for Magpie's eyes to focus before she gives it to her. Natasha lets her swallow and squirm happily for a few bites and a few minutes before picking up the game with the Morse code again.

Pepper watches her, eyes warm; she knows that Pepper thinks Natasha is being ridiculous. The baby is barely six months old. Natasha lets Pepper think that; Pepper doesn't understand what level of memory resurfaces in the face of overwhelming trauma, and that's just fine. Hopefully Magpie will never need her lessons – but if she does, she will have them. She will associate those motions with being safe and happy and fed even before she learns the words attached to them.

Natasha is a much gentler teacher, she suspects, that those who taught her – her evidence being that she doesn't really know how she was taught, but her vocabulary of ingrained responses is varied and vast.

***

“Ma'am? You may want to ask your driver to pull around back – here, I can give him directions,” says the salesgirl, holding her hand out for Pepper's phone.

Pepper is looking out the shop's front window with thinly pressed lips. 

There'd been a small protest aimed at the bank at the end of the block, when they'd come in. In the few hours they've been shopping and eating and talking over cooling mugs of pudding-thick hot chocolate, that protest has swollen. The faces Natasha can see outside are agitated and angry, shouting over the backs of the heads of the people in front of them, shaking their signs like prisoners rattling the bars of their cells. There's a police officer out there, trying to usher people away from the doorway, but he's making little headway. 

Magpie points out the window, babbles something excited, then turns and pats at Pepper's face. Pepper pats absently at her back and drops a kiss into the soft, chocolate-colored down of her hair. Natasha doubts she realizes it, but she's shifted her hold on the baby just a little – her hand bracing rather than merely supporting now, her elbow out. Magpie frowns, and looks back out the window, and starts to snuffle. 

Because Pepper doesn't realize her own posture and expression has instructed her daughter's reaction, Pepper sees only that the protestors have made her baby cry. Her scowl goes fierce. 

“No, thank you, that won't be necessary,” Pepper tells the salesgirl in clipped, knife-sharp syllables, then speaks again into the phone. “Happy? No, pull up front. I know. We'll wait. No, right up front. Yes I am going to march out there and – because I have as much a right to be on that street as they do, I have nothing to be ashamed of, and that is the example I want to set for Margaret, whether she's old enough to remember it or not. Thank you.” A pause. Quieter, “Really, thank you, Happy. I appreciate it. Yes. Thank you.” 

And she hangs up.

“Are you sure this is wise?” Natasha asks, as neutrally as possible.

“No,” Pepper sighs, “But I don't think it's really dangerous.” Another speaking pause. “Do you?” 

Natasha takes another long, serious look at the crowd. At Pepper's determined face; at the confused tear-tracks on Magpie's cheeks, before the little girl turns and buries her head in Pepper's neck. “I think I can make sure it's not,” Natasha says. 

***

They wait nearly 20 minutes; Magpie calms down and starts sucking on the much-abused rainbow dress again, then falls asleep. When Happy pulls carefully up to the curb, assisted somewhat by the beleaguered policeman, Pepper steps out with heels that click and chin up, every inch the CEO of Stark Industries and let the devil take the hindmost. Natasha stays close, and carries the bags. For all her lack of a mask, in civilian clothes she is rarely recognized.

It is approximately twelve steps from the store to the open door of the car. 

At step two one of the protestors leans around the policeman and spits on the car; his companions look equal parts amused and horrified, and the officer shuffles them back as best he can. 

At step three, a young man across the street locks on to Pepper's face. “Hey you! Hey! Stark!”

Natasha suspects that to most anyone else, his lone voice would be nearly indistinguisable from the general din. Certainly few others would be able to see the way his eyes are dilated at this distance, though they might pick up a slight unnatural looseness to his limbs, a ragdoll quality to his suddenly frantic gesturing. Intoxicated. Very. 

“Hey Stark whore! That's Tony Stark's whore over there! Corporate whore! _Corporate whore!_ ” He's screaming loudly enough to stand out now, and Pepper flinches, but her chin doesn't waver as she takes her fifth, more hurried step. Magpie is struggling awake, whimpering, eyes wide and disoriented. 

On step six, the man grabs a bottle from the girl standing next to him and throws it. 

Natasha does not know and does not care if his aim is good or bad. Magpie, flailing, has leaned a little out from Pepper's chest, making Pepper slow to keep hold of her. The bottle will miss Pepper. It won't miss Maggie. 

Natasha has dropped the bags and slid into the space between the projectile and its target in the time between seconds. She does not try to catch the bottle; she doesn't want the bottle caught. She wants the bottle to hit someone so that charges can be pressed – just not Magpie, not Pepper. 

It shatters – glass, and heavy with liquid – against her back even as Pepper is screaming and Happy is lurching out from his place at the car's door to grab Pepper's shoulders, one arm wrapping around to encompass Magpie too. He all but throws them in the car. 

“Get the bags,” Natasha says. Happy stares at her like she's lost her mind. “Get the bags,” Natasha repeats, “and get her out of here.” 

He knows her well enough now not to insist on rescuing her too. The police officer is radioing for backup and trying to wade through the crowd to the man who is so high and thoughtless that he's cheering – cheering because Natasha, presumably some part of the Stark Industries machine, has iced green tea and a few thin trickles of blood running down her back. Pepper has pulled the door shut after her, and Happy manages to get around the car and in the driver's side door, but with their officer distracted the crowd has swarmed through the gap he left, down the street, surrounding them. The car is going nowhere any time soon.

A girl – the girl whose bottle was commandered as weapon – has slipped her way through the crush toward Natasha, abandoning her companion. Three officers are wrestling him to the ground across the street. The rest of the crowd doesn't seem to know what to do; the man threw a bottle at a baby. There are lines, apparently. For now. It would take little more, Natasha thinks, to push the situation over the edge to where lines are a distant memory.

“I'm so sorry!” the girl gushes. “He has problems, like, really bad problems, and he lost his insurance and his dad kicked him out and it's not his -”

“Back up,” says Natasha.

“-fault, really, he can't help it, he gets worked up and he just - he wouldn't ever want to hurt a baby. Are you okay? We have a first aid kit, we can -”

“Back,” Natasha repeats, “up.” 

An older woman nearby grabs the girl's arm, giving Natasha a wary look. “Honey, let it go.” 

“He didn't mean it!” The girl is crying now. “It's not his fault, I swear, it's really not his fault.” 

“I believe you,” Natasha says. The girl's tears stutter. She opens her mouth to speak again. “Now _back up_.”

The girl nods and backs away as if she's been given some kind of absolution; Natasha doesn't care, as long as she stops interfering with her line of sight, her ability to guard the car while Happy inches it backward. 

Maybe it wasn't his fault; that's not Natasha's problem. Fault is a matter of semantics, assigned after the fact. The man believed his cause justified; maybe he would have considered Magpie acceptable collateral damage. Maybe not. She might have, once; it puts her in a unique position to understand just how little that really matters. 

The glass crunches under her feet. 

***

After her statement is given, Natasha spends the rest of the afternoon reading in one of the common areas of the Tower. She does this specifically so that Stark won't have to break into her house to find her; Bruce is waist-deep in a project and doesn't need to be interrupted. 

Tony says hello by placing an enormous bottle of very, very expensive Russian vodka on the table in front of her.

“What's this?” she asks, following the script; tedious but necessary.

“Thank you,” he says, and shrugs. Then he flops down in the chair across from her. “I apparently owe you a daughter.” Pause. “Right, redact that. I meant -” He waves negligently, staring at the far wall. Natasha closes her book. 

“Pepper is down at the District Attorney's office with lawyers, trying to convince them to charge him with attempted murder. Don't think that's going to stick, really, but . . hey, go team.”

“Where's Magpie?” Natasha asks.

“Little Bird's asleep. With Steve at her door and Clint in the ducts, and I'm pretty sure JARVIS did something to the electronic security on that sector that . . . well I wouldn't walk in there if he doesn't know you right now, let's put it that way. I have some scary bastards for friends, have you noticed that?” 

“I think it comes with the territory.” Natasha smirks.

“Yeah. One of many perks,” Tony says, voice far too flat.

“That guy threw a bottle at Virginia Potts, CEO of Stark Industries,” Natasha reminds him. “Not at Pepper, Iron Man's girlfriend.”

“Pep said he was calling her a whore.”

“I think that was metaphorical. _Corporate_ whore.”

“Ah,” says Tony, mouth twisting at the distinction. “Well, that's much better.”

“Do you honestly think, if she had never met you, that she wouldn't be running someone else's company?” 

“No, no, you're entirely right.” Tony waves at her again, a gesture that most would interpret to mean 'go away, your logic annoys me' – but he's still in the chair. Natasha speaks fluent Tony, so she just waits.

“I kind of want to go down there and set him on fire,” Tony admits, after a moment, in a speculative tone. “Do you suppose that's normal? I mean, wanting to hurt the guy, sure, but this is surprisingly specific. I have accelerants in mind.” 

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Natasha says. “You'd never get past security, though.” 

He looks over at her. “I could blast the walls.” 

“Bad PR,” she counters. “Just inviting more incidents like this one.” 

He stares more. 

“You,” he pauses, considers, looks disbelieving for a moment, then shakes his head. “You, you could get past security. Asleep.” 

“I don't set people on fire,” Natasha says. “Somebody else's signature. Okay, the one time I was emulating her signature. But otherwise, I prefer subtlety.” 

“You would -”

“Are you asking me to?” 

His face is a sonnet, an ode to the human condition. “You would, if I did.” 

“I'm asking,” Natasha repeats, “if you'd want me to.” 

He says nothing.

“It could look like an accident. Or a suicide. Do you want that?”

He searches her, and Natasha knows he doesn't see half as much as he reveals. “Yes,” he finally says, strangled. “I – yes. Fuck it. Do it. Bastard could have – do it.” 

Natasha holds his gaze until he deflates. 

“But, you're not going to, are you?” 

“No,” Natasha admits. “It's the wrong call; it doesn't matter how natural I make it look, there will be the suspicion. It'll ramp up tensions. It will put them both in more danger, in the long run. The threat here isn't one man, can't be eliminated by taking out one man, however . . . satisfying . . . that might be.” 

“Yeah, sure, right, what the fuck ever, so what – why'd you – what made this fuck with Tony day?”

“Nothing,” Natasha says, honestly. 

“So did I pass or fail?”

“Who said I was testing _you?_ ” Natasha asks, and lets him hear the shake in her voice. It isn't feigned, just allowed to slip its leash a little. 

“Hey,” Tony says, sitting up and suddenly looking concerned. “Hey, thank you. I said thank you, right? With vodka. Are _you_ okay?” 

“I'm always okay,” says Natasha, takes her thanks, and leaves. 

***

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the song 'Innocent' by Our Lady Peace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYifQoEcWY4 . . . which is kinda my favorite song ever, by the way.


End file.
